I’m Adele Stan, Investigative Reporter on the Right Wing, and I have a message for you:

Since the beginning of the Tea Party movement, AlterNet has been on the case, sending me into right-wing gatherings for the investigative reports I’ve been bringing you for more than a year. Now, together with AlterNet’s Don Hazen, I’ve put together a book — available exclusively through AlterNet — about virtually every aspect of the Tea Party.

For a good deal of my investigative journalism career, I have focused on the right wing in America. I’ve attended countless conservative gatherings, deconstructed the organizations, and probed the power brokers and money people who lurk behind the scenes.

Over time I’ve learned how essential this investigative work is. And, frankly, I have been frightened by what I have seen. The radical conservatives in the U.S. are aggressively attempting to dismantle much of what I and many of us feel is invaluable in our country — the safety net of Social Security, Medicare, not to mention the rights of women, minorities, gays and lesbians. They oppose the idea of protecting the earth for future generations, freedom of expression, and even the existence of the public education system itself.

Today the “Tea Party” is ferociously attacking President Obama and any thought of reforming our system. But to fight the conservatives and the Tea Party we need to know what motivates them, how to answer their propaganda, and understand the structure of Tea Party Inc. Which is why we compiled this book.

The roots of our current political crisis, with the Tea Party attacking just about everything I believe in, moving the public discourse further and further to the right, is part of a pattern that has been operating for more than 40 years. This latest right-wing uprising, however, is stronger, more destructive and even better-funded than the religious right that preceded it.

In Dangerous Brew, we take you behind the scenes, into seminars for activists conducted by the “journalists” of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial page. We take you to local Tea Party meetings, and inside the minds of these activists. And we suggest ways in which progressives might counter this burgeoning phenomenon. We feature reporting and analysis by top-flight writers, including Bill Moyers, Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Alexander Zaitchik and Michelle Goldberg, to name just a few.

Thank you for all the support and encouragement you have given us as we’ve pursued our coverage of the Tea Party and the right. Please help us continue this critical work by purchasing a copy of Dangerous Brew, available here for $10. This book is not available in stores: it’s an AlterNet exclusive.

Best regards,

Adele M. Stan

P.S — This week, AlterNet published my latest investigation, a look at the money behind the big Astroturf groups called Tea Party Inc. Check it out!